Recent Comments So today I picked up my shiny new 60mm f2.8 macro lens. I proceeded to spend about 3 hours taking photos of shit. You can see the results by clicking the below image. Internet!
You need to watch, at an absolute minimum, the first 42 seconds of this.
Then the genius of it will hit you.
Yes, at long last, thanks to the sterling efforts of these thoroughly amazing chaps, it’s now possible to express sarcasm on an Internet!
“HOW?!” I hear you cry!
It’s simple! You just send them the princely sum of $1.99 and they send you back a bit of software that installs the new sarcasm punctuation mark onto your PC!
Then your dreams of being able to use sarcasm online can finally be realised.
Never mind that for anyone else to even see it, they’ll also need to buy the thing. Just ignore that and buy it for yourself, and wave goodbye to wondering whether your own words are sarcastic or not!
Amazing!
Hot on the heels of that SRS BSNS post, then, is this: Tetris with a twist.
Literally.
You’ll see what I did there after you’ve tried it.
See?
A man was arrested under the Terrorism Act and issued with a life ban from Doncaster’s airport after joking on Twitter that he would blow it “sky high” if his flight was delayed.
Now, excuse me for being rational here for a second, but is that not the most absurd thing to have happened in years? Actually, it strikes me as being pretty equal on the scale of Batshit Insane as the guy who wasn’t allowed on a flight due to his t-shirt having a print of a Transformer on it.
There’s a write up on the Telegraph.
The gist of it is that he posted the following due to being concerned about missing a flight because of a snow-related airport closure (I’d link to the tweet itself, but it’s been deleted):
Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!
A hearty “Well done!” to whichever Daily Mail-reading shitpipe phoned that into the police. Really, it’s making me fear for my life even reading it now, after I knowingly pasted it in to this box myself, it’s just so obviously threatening. Oh wait: no it isn’t.
Part of me is thinking;
If you don’t want to get arrested for hoax bomb plots, don’t post things like that anywhere in the first place
and that’s all well and good. Sure, he was a bit silly, or perhaps, a tad careless, given that we should all be familiar with how encroached upon our civil liberties have become in recent years. To focus on that, though, is to miss a much more crucial part of this story, which is what another part of me is thinking about;
If things keep going along this sort of track, am I going to end up with the fuzz at my door for calling whoever phoned this in a shitpipe? Or even for posting about how dumb I think the police’s actions were? Or for calling them ‘the fuzz’? Where’s the line? Does one even exist?
A guy has been arrested for, essentially, a thought crime. It’s pretty major. Or at least, one step away from pretty major. Indicative of potential pretty major-ness, for certain.
As far as doing things on the Internets goes, I tend to take a view along the lines of that taken by Internet-famous Internet-funny Internet-guy David Thorne, to wit;
The Internet is a playground
yet here we have a stark warning that, hey, it’s actually not. It’s actually pretty serious business, and you need to think pretty carefully about what you say, lest the government decide to use anti-terror laws to teach you a lesson.
Anti-terror laws. Actually used to actually arrest a guy over something which was clearly harmless.
Doesn’t that concern you?
I know this is a year old, but so what. Also, all the versions on youtube with the actual video too have embedding disabled, those fucks.
So why the fuck is this thing, which leaked today, so fucking shit?
Liam Neeson looks lame and sounds terrible.
Quinton Jackson looks lame and sounds terrible.
Everything else looks lame and sounds: terrible.
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES RUINED, THANKS FOR THAT.
What childhood awesomeness will they ruin next?
Perhaps The Dukes O Hazz- oh.
What about Knight Ride- oh.
Maybe The Incredible Hu- oh.
Surely not Transform- oh.
Do we, the class of the 80s, actually have any memories left?
Two nights out in the snow with the camera, so far, with varying results.
Not sure yet why full auto mode gives nice white pictures and Av/Tv modes yellow-hued ones, but I’ll figure it out. Maybe.
From SaskView
Irrelevant bygone bastion of closed-mindedness and unquestioning-loyalty-to-cosmic-Jewish-zombies-with-misplaced-sense-of-justice-and-who-have-fuck-all-understanding-of-the-meaning-of-the-word-’sacrifice’ “The Church of England” has decided to try and combat its irrelevance and… bygone-ness by forcing itself upon school kids and attempting to entice them into its insane doctrine.
Just what we need!
An article in Teh Grauniad (spotted thanks to D. Brown) has all the literally-frightening details. It fails to touch on something important, however, arising out of a quote from the CoE’s chief education officer:
We do not endorse high-pressure techniques, we would not endorse anything that places psychological pressure on someone. We would endorse ways of interesting children in the Christian faith and the Christian story.
If you translate that into Japanese and then back into English via one of those New Fangled Internet Translation Internets Websites, you’ll see that it actually says the following:
We know that what we are slanging is batshit insane. We know that if we actually educated children on the actual facts and contradictions they wouldn’t buy it, precisely as they’re not buying it at the minute. Thus, we will present to them a distanced, fluffier, altogether nicer version of things which they will like, to entice them in. Then, when there’s a vested psychological interest, it won’t matter if they learn the truth of the matter. The dawn of the second dark age is nigh!
That’s literally actually an actual fact. It really does come back out as that. Honest. Literally actually honest. Actually actually honest.
Second place on the Leaderboard Of Worryingness goes to something raised by this, one of the stated aspects of the campaign:
An information campaign to supply schools with materials to fulfil their legal duty to conduct a daily act of worship amid reports that many schools have dropped it.
A legally mandated daily act of worship in schools. Are we really still that backwards? Oh, yes, it seems we are. My bad.
I’m actually literally looking forward to the hot water and furore that trying to reinstate such practices in many of our multi-cultural schools will create. Perhaps it will lead to the realisation that such a law is outmoded and dangerous and will result in it being repealed? Actually I just remembered that single faith schools have become all the rage under Labour, so, perhaps I won’t hold my breath on that.
To close; I have religious friends, quite a few. Oftentimes thoroughly lovely sorts, and I don’t go out of my way to stuff anti-religious rants down their faces. That said, when it comes to publicly funded campaigns to trick kids, who can’t know any better, into buying into this stuff, I gots to say something.
McCondom
By far the oddest "thanks for looking after my cats while I was holidaying in Scotland" thank you present I've ever been given.
DVD Towers
200-ish DVDs, a shocking proportion of which remain unwatched. Sadly they are heat-warped so the picture isn't 100% straight :(
Have A Coke And A Smile, Mike
Spot the reference!
Also; another day, another new camera toy. I now have remote trigger so don't have to take a dozen shots of each setup, trying to press the shutter button as delicately...